Hey I just finished Jack Kerouac's On the Road, it was a great great read. If you havent read it I reccomend it to anyone. Also I was wondering what other Kerouac titles are good as On the Road or close to.

Also I was wanting to know opinions on the works of William S. Burroughs I have read Naked Lunch and wanted to know everyones opinion on his other titles. Thank you very much!!!

I tried to read On The Road once. I quit less than a third of the way in because I found it deeply and profoundly bad.

As far as Kerouac goes, On The Road is his best book. I have read almost everything else he has and it was so dry I kept falling asleep.
Now Burroughs, that is another story. I would recomend his cut-up trilogy. Amazing stuff. Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded and The Soft Machine. You can usually find these at any used book store for cheap.

I'm a huge Kerouac fan and of all his books my two absolute favourites are Desolation Angels and Subterraneans.

Desolation Angels is very moody and depressing but fascinating nonetheless - he wrote it while living/working as a tower watchman in a national forest (i forget where exactly) where the only person he ever talked to was another watchman once a day over the radio and the person who brought him supplies once a week. Excellent book.

Subterraneans is the complete opposite - very manic. The story goes that he wrote the entire thing while high on benzedrine. Supposedly he stayed awake for many hours and sort of stream conciousness wrote typed his thoughts out on a large roll of white paper so he never had to stop to put in another sheet.

Those are my two favs of his writings. I would also recommend the book Neal wrote (i believe it is called the First Third) that covers the same time period and trips that On the Road did.

This is a very good book but I don't think it covers the same time period as On The Road. It is more about how Neal grew up in Colorado, if I remember correctly.I would also recomend Grace Beats Karma by Neal, it is the letters Neal and Jack wrote each other and makes a good companion piece to this book.

[Edited by junkie on 06-06-01 at 08:36 PM]

You most likely are right about it not covering the same time period - it has been many a year since i've read any of these books so i'm operating on a very old memory.

i love burroughs. i got a lot of his spoken word stuff off of napster back in the day and whenever i read his books, i hear his crackly old voice in my head. i just read junky and queer. they chronicle his time in new orleans and mexico, amoung other places, as a youngster. it's the only material i've read of his that address his wife and the subsequent disaster. if you want to delve into the world of addiction, don't watch requiem for a dream, read junky. good stuff and a very quick read.

My favorite Kerouac is Visions of Cody. In certain parts the words spill off the page like musical notes streaming from Charlie Parker's alto sax.